The Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, invites researchers and policy makers to submit papers to the XII Annual International Conference on Public Policy and Management.
The theme this year is Inclusion and Exclusion: Policy and Practice
The Twelfth Annual International Conference on Public Policy and Management was hosted by the Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore from August 7-9, 2017. This year’s theme was ‘Inclusion and Exclusion: Policy and Practice’. The three-day event brought together policy makers, academics, consultants, members of NGOs and subject experts from different disciplines around the world to discuss at length multiple policy issues spread over a vast canvas.
Prior to it, there was a pre-conference event touching on the quantitative and policy nature of the conference. During August 5-6, CPP organised the 5th Public Policy Hackathon, which is a 24-hour team event, which seeks to develop evidence-based suggestions on how public policy can address challenges facing society. Each team comprising a few members is expected to use a dataset to develop evidence towards what policy alternative may help address a key policy question of their choice.
The policy hackathon, participants were supposed to find various ways to develop apps focussed on exploiting fragmented data repositories to create a policy tool that can help improve program and policy outreach, enrollment and outcomes. This year, the hackathon was in-partnership with the MapUnity – a non-profit organisation, which was incubated at the entrepreneurship and innovation hub of IIM Bangalore NSRCEL. It was followed by presentations by short-listed team submissions. The jury included: Dr Ashwin Mahesh, MapUnity; Dr Hema Swaminathan, Centre for Public Policy, IIMB; Satya, MapUnity; Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO, Namma Bengaluru Foundation; and Dr Arnab Mukherji, chairperson, Centre for Public Policy, IIMB. To know more about the hackathon, please click here
This year’s conference had a variety of academic sessions, topical policy debates, workshops, panel discussions and practitioner-oriented discussions around key topics in public policy and management domain and the contemporary policy research in India. These included a special track on: Political Economy and individual tracks on:
- Argumentative Policy Analysis
- Conflict, Security and Policy
- Right to Education
- Role of Agricultural Information Delivery in Sustainably Increasing Farm Incomes in India
- Role of Technology in enabling Educational Inclusion
- Peri-urban Areas: Dynamics of change, ecosystems and governance
Out of the 168 research papers received, the jury committee comprising IIMB faculty members decided to accept 65 papers, which explored different ways by which policy processes impact social outcomes using both theoretical and empirical lenses spanning research and practitioner pieces that cover academia, industry, and the government. Dr. Arnab Mukherji, Chairperson, Centre for Public Policy, introduced the theme of the conference and said it would provide a platform for useful conversations between academicians, public policy makers and NGOs.
On August 7, Prof Anjan Mukherji, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi delivered the keynote address on ‘The Role of Government or the Size of Government?’ He pointed out that more than the desirable size of governments, what governments should do is the more important question. “Governments could be large or small but they should work for the well-being and prosperity of the citizens,” said Prof Mukherji.
A panel led by Prof Ashutosh Varshney, from Brown University, on ‘Electoral Practices in India’, featured policy makers, politicians and academics, including Prof. Rajeev Gowda, MP, Rajya Sabha and Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan, founder, Lok Satta Party.
On August 8, there was a plenary session, which explored the status and current practice of Decentralization of Public Policy in India after the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution in the early 1990s. Dr. M. Govinda Rao, Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), led the panel discussion with insights from T. Raghunandan, former Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Prof. Sandeep Shastri, Pro Vice Chancellor, Jain University, and V. M. Ghorpade, Vice President, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee.
The conference also included a specialised session, which aimed to push the discourse on how the fragmented healthcare system can be brought within a common framework to achieve integrated pathways for care at multiple levels and at multiple geographies in a country like India where informality drives the economy. The participants were B. S. Ajaikumar, CEO and Chairman, HCG Hospitals, Shalini Rajneesh, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Health, Government of Karnataka, Srinivas Prasad, CEO, Philips Innovation Center and K. Sujatha Rao, former Secretary for Health and Family Welfare, Government of India and the author of widely acclaimed book entitled: ‘Do We Care?’ Dr. Arnab Mukherji, Chairperson, Centre for Public Policy, IIM Bangalore and Prof. Chirantan Chatterjee from ISB anchored this track in an effort to drive forward policy conversations in the health sector.
The closing address was delivered by Prof G. Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore, on ways forward in engaging with policy research, curating public policy debates and influencing public policy.